Apple is still one of the most desirable brands in the world, no doubt largely due to the company's fierce protection of that brand. In addition to periodic bouts of trademark bullying, it has also displayed an alarming antipathy towards developers who stray over the boundaries of what it considers to be acceptable.
Its tight control over the content of apps offered on its platform is notorious. Some see this as nothing more than excessively good quality control. Others see it as something far more arbitrary -- apps removed simply because someone at Apple didn't like them.
A website that helped users locate Apple stores with iPhones and iPads available for sale has shut down its service after being hit with a notice alleging that it violated Apple.com's terms of service.
Apple-Tracker.com and iphone-check.herokuapp.com examined publicly available inventory information from Apple.com and tried to make it easier for people to navigate. The service gained some attention, with articles in the Los Angeles Times and other news sites.
The site now shows a message from developer Mordy Tikotzky saying, "I've decided to turn off the site. I'm not doing this because I want to, but rather because I received a DMCA takedown notice from Apple. I'm not really interested in picking a fight with apple so..... I guess it time to just say good bye." On Twitter, Tikotzky wrote, "It might be legal but I don't have the resources to fight with Apple."
First, just for clarification, what Tikotzky received was not a DMCA notice. It's simply a "takedown notice" issued by Apple's legal team asking him to take down his site.
But why would Apple take his site down? Its sole purpose was to help potential customers find the exact phone or tablet they were looking for by aggregating item availability from all the stores in a certain zip code. Yes, Apple's own site contains a search function but it doesn't do what Tikotzky's site did. Apple will allow you to search for one item (16Gb iPad Air) and list stores where it's available. Tikotzky's apple-tracker did this better. It provided a table of all available models and lit up with an easy-to-see green if it was available at a certain store.
To achieve this using Apple's site, a person would have to run multiple searches and keep track of which one had what models. Titkotzky's automated this -- which is likely what Apple determined to be a violation of its TOS. Here's the relevant part of the TOS as quoted in the takedown letter.
Your Use of the Site. You may not use any “deep-link”, “page-scrape”, “robot”, “spider” or other automatic device, program, algorithm or methodology, or any similar or equivalent manual process, to access, acquire, copy or monitor any portion of the Site or any Content, or in any way reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the Site or any Content, to obtain or attempt to obtain any materials, documents or information through any means not purposely made available through the Site. Apple reserves the right to bar any such activity.
Apple doesn't want you to do much with its site. And this very restrictive wording is what turns handy tools into "violations" and "circumventing the navigational structure" into an unacceptable situation, according to Apple. (Not only that, but if so inclined, someone could probably push for charges under the CFAA, which views this sort of "circumvention" as a crime.)
All this does is maintain the status quo. Do not screw with Apple's stuff. If it wanted a handy aggregation tool, it presumably would have built it itself and covered it in tastefully rounded corners and pleasing color gradients. Tikotzky's tracker may have increased sales, but it ultimately doesn't matter, not when there's turf to protect.
People are constantly searching for ways to improve the services they use, but they're running head on into companies like Apple and Craigslist who take the stance that the customer will get what's provided by the company, instead of what they actually want. It's unfortunate, but for some, protecting the brand is more important than serving those purchasing their products.
"Justice prevails" is often declared when a court case ends, honoring a system that produces the right result. Right, however, is not always just. The judicial system needs to address the exorbitant costs that accompany litigation, or a situation can happen when a company is sued by a deeper pocket plaintiff, wins the case, but has to shut down because the cost of litigation has exhausted its financial capital.
Last month, in a unanimous decision, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, once again, a judgment
in favor of Veoh Networks in a widely followed copyright case brought six years ago by
Universal Music Group. Veoh, the court held, was entitled to rely on the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and was not liable for copyright infringement for user-uploaded videos that Universal alleged contained their copyrights, an important precedent that benefits YouTube and others. Veoh, the company I joined during the early stages of the digital video revolution in 2006, which pioneered long form viewing on user generated content sites, and was the first site to offer premium content from major networks like ABC and CBS, is not around anymore to capitalize on its victory. Three years ago, a few months after Veoh's win at the district court, its leadership surveyed the war torn company, wounded from a litigation battle designed to inflict the very damage the lawsuit had wrought, wondered, at what price victory and decided to sell the assets and closed the doors. Universal Music lost the case, but achieved victory, shutting down an innovative company that threatened their static business model.
From the outset of the case, Universal Music Group made sure Veoh would suffer financially. They issued many discovery requests, doing their best to make sure Veoh spent money to defend itself. Savvy plaintiffs know how to exert pressure by exploiting our judicial system's liberal rules regarding discovery. In this regard, advances in technology have not produced economic efficiencies. Millions of documents and casual conversations are stored on computers, readily accessible. These petabytes of data need to be prepared and reviewed by lawyers before being produced in response to a discovery request. The lawyers' bill increases very rapidly when an army of attorneys is reviewing all this data. Because the bulk of documents and discovery often lie with the defendant, plaintiffs can inflict maximum financial pain on a defendant, while producing relatively few documents themselves. This tilted playing field gives plaintiffs an unfair advantage. In the Veoh case, legal fees on discovery alone were enormous, exacerbated by the magistrate's decisions to compel the company at its own cost to store every single video on our system, and to even produce Skype conversations. Who suffers? The defendant. Recourse? None.
The company quickly recognized the economics of litigation and the lack of upside to being a defendant and offered to settle. However, Veoh never had meaningful settlement discussions; Veoh did not have the cash to pay the amount Universal was seeking. The company was left with no choice but to litigate, and spend money.
To counter the ticking clock and register, Veoh hoped for a quick resolution to lift the dark cloud Universal had placed on the company that handcuffed it from raising the additional funds the company needed to grow. The case, however, was not resolved in the district court for over two years and is now approaching the six-year anniversary.
Defendants need an option other than to just play defense and wait. It was well documented in the case that Universal never even sent Veoh any takedown notice for their content and was similarly undisputed that every time Veoh received a takedown notice from every other content owner, that Veoh took the content down. Universal could have achieved its goal of having its alleged content removed from Veoh's website by merely sending the company a letter. Our judicial system gave Universal the right to sue. Shouldn't Veoh have any rights or recourse, especially when a mere letter could have avoided an entire litigation?
Unfortunately, the only option available to Veoh was to file a motion to recover fees after it won the case, even though this avenue was too little too late; the mortal damage was already inflicted. Six years of combative litigation cannot be undone entirely by recovering legal fees. Yet, the standard for recovering fees is very high and Veoh was not successful. Despite its favorable decision on the merits of the case, the Ninth Circuit denied awarding Veoh its fees, instead remanding to the District Court to consider awarding Veoh its much lower court costs. The Ninth Circuit's ruling on this point only further weakens an already poor option for innocent companies.
Our judicial system needs a solution to rectify the devastation that unfounded litigation causes companies ultimately proven innocent. Courts need to be sensitive to the new entrant and pay respect to the scales of justice when a deep pocket plaintiff goes after a financially weaker opponent. Instituting "loser pays" into the concept of commercial litigation in appropriate situations improves the chances for defendants, and could reduce meritless litigation. While this concept has been debated for decades, another standard needs to be introduced, one that holds plaintiffs and their lawyers equally accountable. Plaintiffs' lawyers should be compelled to pay any 'loser pays' fee along with their clients.
In a world where plaintiffs' lawyers share in multi-billion dollar settlements, it seems only fair that if they lose a case they should pay. This will force lawyers to think twice about the merits of their clients' case, as opposed to what strong-armed litigation tactic they can use to extract a settlement. If lawyers are held accountable for their - and their client's - actions in a manner never before applied, we will see what everyone wants: a precipitous drop in the number of cases in our judicial system. We can even adopt a three strikes policy and ban law firms and their clients for twelve months if they are found guilty of such abusive behavior on more than two occasions. How refreshing that would be.
Fewer litigations will reduce the dockets of federal and state courts, reducing the need for our government to increase the number of judges and court staff, thereby saving taxpayers' money. Plaintiffs will pay more attention to increasing defendant's legal fees lest they lose. Legal fees and costs will decline, which will lead to a downward pressure on insurance premiums. Most importantly, productivity will increase. Companies will spend
previously allocated monies to litigation on research, development, hiring, and expansion of operations.
Veoh encountered a plaintiff set on its destruction. They were unable to defeat Veoh in the world of technology or in the world of business. With those avenues closed, Universal sued. The judicial system provided Universal with what it could not achieve on a level business playing field. Veoh won the case but is not around to continue to grow. That is wrong. UMG and its lawyers should be required to pay for the damage they have done. Strike one to a plaintiff and its lawyers. Fairness in our judicial systems dictates such an outcome.
Joshua Metzger is an Internet consultant. He was SVP Corporate Development & General Counsel for Veoh Network and before that was chief legal officer for Overture Services, which was acquired by Yahoo!.
UK Parking Control (UKPC) is accused of revealing photographs of Brits' cars parked with number plates clearly to be read and in some cases the location revealed. In some images it's alleged that other details such as identification cards, shopping or belongings are clearly visible. Campaigners against private parking firms believe these images - allegedly made easily accessible to anyone on the UKPC website - exposed drivers' personal information.
When UKPC tickets a car, its enforcers take photos of the vehicle (and, apparently, inside the vehicle, among other places), which are uploaded to UKPC's site. The ticket itself has a printed URL pointing to the damning photos of the illegally parked vehicle. It's a slick system, but its "security" is easily thwarted by a process AT&T might find strangely familiar.
[O[ne ticket recipient claimed to have found that by tweaking values in this web address, he could access thousands of other digital photographs of other people's vehicles... Some shots show personal items on view inside the vehicles, such as an ID card placed next to a disabled-driver badge.
As you may recall, tweaking URLs allowed "Weev" to access the email addresses of hundreds of iPad users (and landed him in jail). The same lack of basic security is on display here. Changing a few values in the URL results in access to photos you were never meant to see.
A blog called Nutsville, which has been a longtime critic of the UK's private parking enforcement, posted several photos obtained from UKPC's website. Among the expected photos of vehicles (with visible license plates) are other oddities, including shots of the lower extremities of parking enforcement employees relaxing at home, several photos of vehicle interiors and most disturbingly, crystal clear photos of drivers' identification cards.
After the Register reported this story, the UK Information Commissioner's office pledged to investigate the leak. UKPC hasn't publicly responded to the breach, but it did send its lawyers after Nutsville in the form of a bizarre Letter Before Action that mixes and matches criminal and civil actions and seems unable to decide on when exactly Nutsville should respond/comply. Nutsville's response to the letter is well worth reading, punching holes in its paper-thin claims and generally deriding the ineptitude of the correspondence.
The letter claims Nutsville has breached the Computer Misuse Act, claiming these photos were acquired by "using a password, without authorisation, to access their website." Nutsville points out this is completely false. The only thing accessed were various URLs on UKPC's site by manipulating values in the URL themselves. From that point on, UKPC's legal representative goes completely off the rails, threatening to inform the police (a criminal matter) of Nutsville's actions. Mere sentences later, the lawyer threatens "injunctive High Court proceedings," suddenly making it a civil matter. On top of that, UKPC's rep demands Nutsville take down the blog post by 10 AM on April 2nd, only to wrap up the bungled legalese by requesting a reply by no later than April 8th.
As both deadlines have come and gone with no follow-up post from Nutsville (or response from UKPC), it would appear that the parking enforcement contractor has either given up on pursuing these bogus legal claims or is tied up attempting to clean up its own backyard ahead of the pending investigation.
The most disappointing aspect of this story is UKPC's response. Disappointing, but far from unexpected. For many businesses, the most common reaction to being informed of a data breach is to shoot the messenger. Rather than issue an apology and fix the problem, they tend to fire off legal threats about "unauthorized access" or other vague hacking claims as if the end user making the discovery should be treated as a criminal for their own negligence.
After weathering earlier attacks on its reliability, Wikipedia is now an essential feature of our online and cultural landscapes. Indeed, it's hard now to imagine a world where you can't quickly check up some fact or other by going online to Wikipedia and typing in a few keywords. But that centrality brings with it its own problems, as a post from Benjamin Mako Hill about legal threats he received thanks to his work as a Wikipedia editor makes clear.
Although the Wikipedia article was long and detailed, it sent off some internal Wikipedian-alarm-bells for me. The page read, to me, like an advertisement or something written by the organization being described; it simply did not read -- to me -- like an encyclopedia article written by a neutral third-party.
I looked through the history of the article and found that the article had been created by a user called Icd_berlin who had made no other substantive edits to the encyclopedia. Upon further examination, I found that almost all other significant content contributions were from a series of anonymous editors with IP addresses associated with Berlin. I also found that a couple edits had removed criticism when it had been added to the article. The criticism was removed by an anonymous editor from Berlin.
Several months later a new article was created -- again, by an anonymous user with no other edit history. Although people tend to look closely at previously deleted new pages, this page was created under a different name: "The Institute of Cultural Diplomacy" and was not noticed.
That was problematic, for the following reason:
Deleted Wikipedia articles are only supposed to be recreated after they go through a process called deletion review. Because the article was recreated out of this process, I nominated it for what is called speedy deletion under a policy specifically dealing with recreated articles. It was deleted again. Once again, things were quiet.
But not for long. On 25 February of this year, yet another article about ICD appeared on Wikipedia, once more "out of process", and by a user with almost no previous edit history. The next day, Hill received the following email from Mark Donfried, who is described on ICD's Web site as "Executive Director and Founder of the institute for Cultural Diplomacy":
Please note that the ICD is completely in favor of fostering open dialogue and discussions, even critical ones, however some of your activities are raising serious questions about the motives behind your actions and some even seem to be motives of sabotage, since they resulted in ICD not having any Wikipedia page at all.
We are deeply concerned regarding these actions of yours, which are causing us considerable damages. As the person who initiated these actions with Wikipedia and member of the board of Wikipedia, we would therefore request your answer regarding our questions below within the next 10 days (by March 6th). If we do not receive your response we will unfortunately have to consider taking further legal actions with these regards against you and other anonymous editors.
These events indicate how important it is becoming to have a Wikipedia entry -- preferably a favorable one. Indeed, it's getting to the point where some people think that they actually have a right to one. Although that's a wonderful sign of Wikipedia's power and importance, it also means that it will find itself increasingly under pressure from those who are unhappy at not having an entry, or because of the things the entry says. Maintaining objectivity and a neutral point of view was always hard, but is bound to get harder in the future.
Moreover, it seems likely that Hill finds himself on the receiving end of legal threats because he uses his own name on Wikipedia, rather than operating anonymously as many others do. ICD's current actions almost certainly mean that fewer people will be willing to take that risk, and will instead opt to carry out their work under the cloak of anonymity, or may not want to get involved at all. That last point -- the potential chilling effect -- is the most worrying, as Hill explains:
If I can be scared off by threats like these, anybody can. After all, I have friends at the Wikimedia Foundation, a position at Harvard Law School, and am close friends with many of the world's greatest lawyer-experts on both wikis and cyberlaw. And even I am intimidated into not improving the encyclopedia.
I am concerned by what I believe is the more common case -- where those with skin in the game will fight harder and longer than a random Wikipedian. The fact that it's usually not me on the end of the threat gives me lots of reasons to worry about Wikipedia at a time when its importance and readership continues to grow as its editor-base remains stagnant.
We may come to look back on today's Wikipedia as the project's golden age, before those "with skin in the game" started their assault in earnest, and before Wikipedia editors increasingly gave up trying to ward them off for fear of legal reprisals.
It has long been stated that the Internet is for porn. And while that's never really going to change, it also appears that the Internet has another purpose: baseless legal threats. Something tends to get lost in the ether(net), stripping away many people's ability to think clearly when confronted with criticism. This isn't necessarily a new thing, but we do seem to be "enjoying" a spike in confrontational (but baseless) legal threats.
Here's another story to add to the corpus asshattus of baseless legal threats. The very brief back story: A little over two years ago, The Volokh Conspiracy and Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice blog covered the story of a certain Norman Golb, a University of Chicago professor who found himself tangling with Lawrence Schiffman, the head of Judaic Studies at NYU, over the origins of the Dead Sea scrolls.
These two academics went head-to-head, attacking each other at various internet locations. Norman Golb's son, Raphael, also stepped into the fray, creating more than 50 aliases in an effort to emulate a groundswell of support for his father's viewpoint. Then he went one step further, impersonating Schiffman and sending emails to NYU students and staff suggesting he (as Schiffman) had committed plagiarism in one of his articles.
The end result: Raphael Golb was handed an indictment for identity theft, impersonation and harassment. All of this over an academic pissing match.
Law Offices of Rieders, Travis, Humphrey, Harris, Waters & Waffenschmidt 161 West Third Street PO Box 215 Williamsport, PA 17701 ... E-MAIL TO: Eugene Volovh [volokh@law.ucla.edu] FROM: Clifford A. Rieders, Esquire DATE: March 13, 2013 RE: Lawrence Schiffman CC: Professor Lawrence Schiffman
Please be advised that the undersigned represents Professor Lawrence Schiffman, previously Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, now Vice Provost of Yeshiva University.
Dr. Schiffman's name was the subject of illegal and criminal misconduct by Raphael Golb. Your website has been provided to me as one of the locations where the criminal postings occurred.
Please confirm that within five (5) work days of the date of this email the following will occur:
1. Complete removal of the blog material; 2. Removal of index entries on search engines; 3. Cancellation of fraudulent email accounts; 4. Removal of any other mention or reference to Dr. Schiffman by Mr. Golb or anyone responding to him.
We will need your certification as to all efforts made to expunge the material.
I enclose as Exhibit 1 news release by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announcing the arrest of the 49-year-old Raphael Golb for creating multiple aliases to engage in the campaign of impersonation and harassment relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls and scholars of opposing viewpoints. Mr. Golb was arrested on charges of identity theft, criminal impersonation, and aggravated harassment.
I am also enclosing as Exhibit 2 letter from Director, Witness Aid Services Unit, District Attorney of the County of New York, providing a temporary order of protection which the court issued in the aforementioned criminal case.
I am advised that Mr. Golb has been convicted and appeals denied. Unfortunately, there continue to be current blogs containing Golb's fabricated story, as though Dr. Schiffman acknowledged or admitted some wrongdoing. I am enclosing not only a variety of sampling but also the platform, address and the blog as well as URLs.
Please contact me as soon as possible at ...
The offending post at Volokh contained nothing more than a quote of the People v. Golb opinion and a First Amendment analysis of the decision. (Interestingly, considering the threats, Volokh agreed with the decision that found in favor of Schiffman.) Greenfield's post was a bit more in depth and was written as the case was headed to court.
The e-mail from Mr. Rieders of course offers no explanation of how this is a "criminal posting[]," because of course it isn't. Fortunately, I can tell that there is absolutely zero basis for the demand letter; other recipients of the e-mail might not be so lucky.
I generally do not publish letters sent to me, but unfounded demands such as this are an exception. This is especially so because demonstrating the unsoundness of the lawyer's argument requires showing the entirety of the letter — both the particular language that the letter included ("criminal postings," the demand for "[c]omplete removal of the blog material," the demand for "[r]emoval of any other mention or reference to Dr. Schiffman by Mr. Golb or anyone responding to him," and so on) and what the letter didn't include (any specific explanation for why the material would indeed be legally actionable).
In any event, I'm happy to certify that no efforts whatsoever will be made to expunge the material in that blog post; my response to Mr. Rieders and Prof. Schiffman will be a link to this post.
Eugene is much nicer than I am. Had he not calmly and succinctly explained the email's massive failing, I would have been constrained to respond, bite me. I am happy to say that because of Eugene's parsing of the unfounded email, I can maintain my dignity, merely refer to Eugene's response, and add, "what he said."
I am an attorney in Los Angeles, a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association, and write at a blog called www.popehat.com regarding various legal matters, particularly including free speech and legal threats based on online comment.
Today I noticed two posts — one by Eugene Volokh, and one by Scott Greenfield — discussing legal threats you have sent.
Are you willing to answer questions about those threats? I am planning on writing a post about them, and would like to solicit your position first.
My questions are these:
1. Did you actually draft this threatening email yourself, or was it some underling?
2. Did you actually select the recipients of the letter, or were the targets selected by some automation, or by a non-lawyer?
3. I ask #2 because I am attempting to grasp, in looking at Professor Volokh's post about the Golb matter (http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/29/no-first-amendment-violation-in-e-mail-impersonation-case/), how Professor Volokh's analysis of a published appellate case could possibly be actionable in any way, let alone "criminal."
4. What is your theory on how a discussion of the allegations against Mr. Golb — including allegations that he wronged your client, Mr. Schiffman — could be actionable or "criminal"? Is it your position that your theory has any support in any legal authority accessible to the general public?
5. I recognize that you would not be so unprofessional as to disclose your confidential communication with a particular client. Therefore, let me frame my next series of questions as follows: Are you familiar with the Streisand Effect? Is it your practice to advise clients, before sending out extravagant legal threats demanding the removal of information about them from the internet, about the risks posed by the Streisand Effect — the risk that your threats will result in the challenged content being seen by several orders of magnitude more people? Is it your practice to advise clients that there may be particular risks in threatening bloggers with popular blogs known for being vigorous supporters of the First Amendment?
6. Do you believe that your representation of Mr. Schiffman in the course of making these threats falls within the standard of care for attorneys in your community? Any response you would like to offer would be appreciated, and will be incorporated into my post commenting on your threats.
Thanks, Ken White
White received this in response:
I have no idea what you are talking about, who you are or who you represent. Please therefor, [sic] do not respond again [sic]
White and a couple of his readers went digging for who was actually behind these threats and found, unsurprisingly, that it was someone at the Rieders Travis law firm, as all the emails were sent from the same originating IP address. It seems rather unlikely that the same person who sent the original threatening emails would have "no idea" what Ken was talking about. Unless, of course, someone was generating fake email addresses and impersonating members of the Rieder Travis legal team, but that would just be insanely ironic considering the original subject matter.
The implications of these baseless legal threats for the threatening party are potentially huge. Both Ken White and Scott Greenfield mention the Streisand Effect. Apparently, Cliff Rieders (the person purportedly sending the ill-advised emails) is unfamiliar with the term. If he was, perhaps he wouldn't have bothered irritating this trio of bloggers, because what he's unleashing is going to do quite a bit of harm to his client's interests.
White and Greenfield both have updated their posts to include the news that the Supreme Court in California has granted review of Golb's conviction. The order granting leave to appeal is dated March 11th. The threatening emails arrived on March 13th. This order directly contradicts Cliff Rieders' statement in the last paragraph of his email.
I am advised that Mr. Golb has been convicted and appeals denied.
It certainly looks as though someone's trying to whitewash the web in advance of an appeals hearing. White theorizes that Rieders is blasting out identical emails to anyone who turns up in a rudimentary Google search for Schiffman and Golb. If this was a targeted takedown effort, Rieders likely would have avoided these blogs, choosing to go after more complicit writers. Unfortunately for Rieders and his client, he threatened the wrong people and his clumsy efforts are being debated in the court of public opinion. On top of that, the posts he wanted removed will remain live. Now, he and his client will be linked to unflattering stories about baseless legal threats, leading to even more bloggers pushing back against the takedown attempts.
It's the Streisand Effect and the only way to win is not to play. Many participants aren't even aware they're playing until it's too late. A full withdrawal of the threats, along with an apology, is about the only way to limit the damage. But, if the past is any indication, this will probably get a lot worse for Rieders (and more entertaining for the rest of us) before it gets any better.
So, on Monday, we wrote about some bizarre legal threats sent to Ken White (aka Popehat) concerning a story both of us had written about years ago. That story was about how a Louisiana zoo called the Global Wildlife Center (apparently run by the Global Wildlife Foundation), got upset about an obviously satirical article about giraffes at the GWC killing people, mocking a recent spate of attacks on humans by animals in captivity. The GWC was briefly able to get an injunction that was quickly removed when someone realized that there's this amazing thing called the First Amendment... For reasons unknown, years later, Ken Matherne, suddenly started threatening White over his original post on the story, which quoted a local news source saying the following:
In addition to filing this lawsuit, via email Global Wildlife Foundation president Ken Matherne threatened to file criminal charges, FCC charges, fraud charges, an IRS complaint, a governor's office complaint, and a federal lawsuit against Brilleaux. Matherne's email did not explain any basis for the additional threats.
Matherne sent a series of emails to White, each more endearingly wacky that the previous one, full of interesting legal theories and creative use of the English language. You can read the details from the earlier post, but just to pass on a few of the more memorable quotes:
I did not say anything at the time. But, I think he would get dis-board by the falsified documents he presented to the judge. His father was a friend or I would have had he dis-board.
We are going to dp this all legal – get ready – I will have one of your partners, associates , friends , spouses, in dispositions for the at least the next 6 – 12 months. Minimum – 1 lawsuit lasted 12.7 years, the next only 6 . I have the means – so write me back or get ready.
Ken It was a BS move – and I appreciate that you do that for the best of people – but you always know our kids are first – and I don't care how many $ it takes – my daughter will not live with this – so I will ask you one more time to pull this down – as a gentleman – or I will come to you! My airplane is only 10k an hour – have more cash & Gold in the bank than you can imagine – but if you hurt my daughter through this – my executives has all authority to go until all is done – I only have 1 daughter and it breaks her heart to see this! I would not do this to you or your family!
And more like that. Anyway, we wrote about that and posted it Monday. Today is Wednesday. At 12:49am California time this morning (2:49am in Louisiana, where the Global Wildlife Center is based), it appears that Ken Matherne subscribed to our daily email. Three minutes later, he unsubscribed. One minute after that, the general catchall email address that is the "from" in the subscription confirmation email, received a message from Matherne with the following subject line and no message:
you are saved and wait for me!
Leaving aside the vague notions of religious salvation, we waited. Not for long. At 1:39am our time, we received a "reply" to the unsubscribe notice that just said:
Get ready!
With anticipation building, we continued to wait (actually, we were all asleep). Eight minutes after that email, we got the following:
What state are you registered in? And if any of your two companies are affiliated - we should start to proceed. My daughter asked me not to last night. But after you new post -- I am coming!
Law is the Law !
Half an hour later (about an hour and a half after he first "subscribed") we get to... well... something:
I will save this - as I will see you in court! You may think this is fun and games - I believe in the law. I believe in the court system. You have just started a conspiracy and you documented it yourself.
So take my foundation down out of your harmful and malice posts or I will spend the next 20 years of my life, with every appeal, and every court to see justice. I will sue you as individuals and corporations - if they are legit.
Gentlemen, I only requested you do the right thing. Now you make the decision. And never use the word that I threaten you. I have been kind and upset, but I would never threaten anyone.
I never raised my voice to my wife. I don't care of your back ground - but through investigation and depositions, I will know each and everyone one of you.
You can print this to under one of you internet companies - but please note that I will hire enough geeks to play fair.
I want an answer by 10 CST that you will stop the damage you and your associates have done. I will have no choice but to proceed to expose you and associates, everything! And I love court and depositions!
I like how he is emailing us after 2am California time, where we are located, and giving us less than 6 hours to respond. While we are curious how reporting on facts means that we have started "a conspiracy," and find it even more interesting that he appears to directly be admitting that his intention is merely to tie us up in court, we believe that he probably should have heeded the original advice of his daughter that this was not a productive path to take.
He might also want to look up the definition of what a "threat" is, because saying that he will spend the next 20 years taking us to court is pretty much the definition of a threat.
Anyway, if there is anything he feels we wrote about him that is inaccurate, we (of course) are open to hearing about it, reviewing the evidence and determining if any correction needs to be issued. Though, as we saw with White, Matherne never seemed to provide any such evidence. Either way, we aren't easily bullied by random threats based on bluster and a weak understanding of the law.
Oh, and we should note that while Matherne was referred to as the President of the Global Wildlife Foundation in that original press report that White quoted, one of our commenters pointed out that Matherne does not appear to be listed as an officer, director, trustee or key employee of the Global Wildlife Foundation, according to its publicly available IRS filings, the latest of which you can see here or embedded below. Other reports have said that Matherne is merely the President of the Foundation's "advisory board."
Either way, I would suggest that his emailed threats to both us and Ken White are not doing the Global Wildlife Foundation or Global Wildlife Center any favors. Also, since I imagine he'll be reading this soon enough, Ken Matherne: I believe in the law, too. And the law doesn't let you just make up reasons to bring people to court because you're upset that those people are reporting on factual information that involves an organization that you are connected to. Again, if you believe there are factual inaccuracies in our reporting, we are happy to review the evidence. Otherwise, continually sending these kinds of emails isn't helping anyone.
Almost exactly three years ago, we wrote about a ridiculous situation down in Louisiana, where the "Global Wildlife Center" was able to get a judge to issue an injunction against an obviously satirical site that had written an obviously satirical article about "killer giraffes" and a "recent attack" at the Center. The article was poking fun at recent violent attacks at other zoos, normally involving animals like tigers and bears. It was amazing that a court issued the injunction, and thankfully, less than two weeks later, the injunction was removed and GWC was told to pay the legal costs for the site. And that was the last that we had heard of the Global Wildlife Center... until now.
On Friday, the Center's President apparently threatened to sue lawyer Ken White, better known as Popehat, defender of internet free speech. You see, Popehat had covered the original story too, and for some reason, the President, Ken Matherne, isn't too happy about that (even though it's three years later). Perhaps it was this tidbit in Popehat's original post (which was actually quoted from a local news site):
In addition to filing this lawsuit, via email Global Wildlife Foundation president Ken Matherne threatened to file criminal charges, FCC charges, fraud charges, an IRS complaint, a governor’s office complaint, and a federal lawsuit against Brilleaux. Matherne’s email did not explain any basis for the additional threats.
If that gives you a sense of Matherne's grasp on basic legal concepts, and his willingness to assume that he can use all sorts of totally unrelated laws against people he doesn't like, well, you're just getting a tiny little sense of what Popehat went through on Friday. You kind of have to read the whole thread on Popehat to get the full effect, because each time you think "this can't possibly get more ridiculous," it does exactly that. Assuming Matherne really did send the emails in question, he would appear to have almost as much trouble with the English language as he does with the legal concepts he uses to threaten White. Here's a snippet from the first email:
My last case to decide the Apple vs Microsoft case. I am not joking – you can send this email to the judge and soon as I file suit. I will ask you as I asked that kid to take it down, if you think your malice to to our Foundation is free speech – let’s get real lawyers and hosted judges to find out! It scared teachers, parents and the general public. They were canceling trips, it was malicious, and the evidence given to court was a fraud. I did not say anything at the time. But, I think he would get dis-board by the falsified documents he presented to the judge. His father was a friend or I would have had he dis-board.
Everyone will see the truth of you and your boyfriends. You can print this – You do not have a clue what you did to damage my foundation I created for my daughter. And when you wake up in the morning – hoping you have kids- I want you to think about what you have done. Your site has done more damage than the issue and my guys think your damages will be worse the any free speech issue. And we are ready!
We are going to dp this all legal – get ready – I will have one of your partners, associates , friends , spouses, in dispositions for the at least the next 6 – 12 months. Minimum – 1 lawsuit lasted 12.7 years, the next only 6 . I have the means – so write me back or get ready. This again is no threat. Simply a promise. It is no longer about what the kid did – it is about what your company did! And I promise you we will win = you have damaged my daughters trust for at least 50 years. You are about to meet the best attorneys on the planet.
There's also a discussion about Matherne's belief that White is apparently a dope smoking drug fiend who is having sexual relations with the partners at his law firm (or maybe on Popehat, it's not clear). White, quite calmly, asks Matherne if there was anything specific in the original post that he felt was a false statement of fact, and offered to review such claims and "make adjustments to the post if appropriate." Matherne's response was to just demand that the original Popehat article was taken down "or believe I will do everything for my daughter that you would do for your children !"
And then it got wacky.
Just send me you attorney of record – you will not hurt my daughter – I do not care what it cost ! Ken It was a BS move – and I appreciate that you do that for the best of people – but you always know our kids are first – and I don't care how many $ it takes – my daughter will not live with this – so I will ask you one more time to pull this down – as a gentleman – or I will come to you! My airplane is only 10k an hour – have more cash & Gold in the bank than you can imagine – but if you hurt my daughter through this – my executives has all authority to go until all is done – I only have 1 daughter and it breaks her heart to see this! I would not do this to you or your family!
I really love this line: "My airplane is only 10k an hour – have more cash & Gold in the bank than you can imagine."
White points out, in response, that he is still waiting for any specific inaccuracies, and notes that he's willing to speak to any attorney representing Matherne -- to which Matherne initially sent a simple "Game on!" email, followed by this (not the full email, which has more where this came from):
Get your check book out – and unless you can buy every judge to the State Supreme Court – you will pay damages = not about freedom of speech –
Oh, And I will follow up with everything I said I would do. Ken White, You better have an attorney or get one .
Cannot wait to meet you – You are and I can “quote again” a piece of shit! You do a disservice to mankind. I hope the judge we come before understands what a parasite you are and does not want his kids or grandchildren to be exposed to someone like you!
And I do not care about are inaccuracies about was said or texted. You are wrong and you are libel. Again, I do not lose lawsuits, and I do not think to can pay off the judges!
If I'm reading this right, and I believe that I am, Matherne is not only threatening to take White to court under some ridiculous legal theories, but he is flat out admitting that he does "not care" about "inaccuracies." He also seems to be admitting throughout that he's doing this to tie White up in court. I would imagine that if this ever actually got to a court and wasn't thrown out immediately, these admissions would not help his case very much.
Randomly, out of curiosity, I went to check out the website for the Global Wildlife Foundation, and discovered that if you have Javascript turned off, you can see that they've got a ton of "payday loans" spam links hidden on their page. Either they've been hacked or they're selling link spam. Maybe they should take care of that before issuing bogus legal threats trying to censor a lawyer known for vocally defending the First Amendment.
My apologies ahead of time for the length of this piece, but anything shorter wouldn't do the subject justice. I will, however, provide plenty of pictures and blockquotes. This post deals with a strange copyright troll, which bullies people into properly attributing a quoted poem. The troll runs across multiple social media platforms but does a bulk of its "work" at Twitter, where it can receive instantaneous feedback. Along the way, we'll deal with the poet himself, a company called On Press Inc. and some other connections which seem to indicate the poet himself is behind the trolling, along with a threatened lawsuit against me for copyright infringement, defamation and false claims.
It starts out simply enough. As a contributor to this site, I was doing the sort of thing we do in our downtime -- running a Twitter search for the term "infringement." The search results were dominated by tweets from an account that looked exactly like this one.
Only it wasn't this one. The account I saw had this name: @xsaonpress.
When I returned the next day, I was greeted with the message that the above account had been suspended. Odd. So, I searched again, only this time using the keywords "tongues" and "glass," -- two words in the title of the poem in question -- and found that On Press was still in business.
On Press Inc., supposedly a division of Knopf Publishing (according to its Twitter profiles), was running a search of its own and issuing tweet after threatening tweet to anyone who dared publish a short (really short -- under 140 characters) poem by reclusive poet, Shaun Shane, without attribution. The entire poem reads as follows:
"If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak."
This poem's claim to fame is its use in the Invisible Children/Kony 2012 campaign. The link presented by On Press during these Twitter blowups is an Invisible Children-branded photo that quotes the poem and gives proper attribution, albeit a possibly belated one. On Press' blood was first stirred up by a Huffington Post story about Invisible Children back in April of 2012, which led to this angry comment from On Press:
The Organization Invisible Children has plagiarized and thus committed copyright infringement ( which is illegal) on their website and on their Twitter account, a work by Shaun Shane. Exemplifying the criticism against them that they do not research their facts and have sloppy journalist methods. (Here is a link: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/) and to the Twitter post (https://twitter.com/#!/Invisible/status/196433854851055618/photo/1)
After sending out an ignored invitation (via direct message) to discuss these "tactics," I decided to throw out some bait.
Soon, I was receiving the same set of tweets I'd seen filling up my search results the night before. On Press, utilizing one of its many, many Twitter accounts, gave me its usual combination of Shaun Shane info and legal threats. On Press has a very shaky grasp on IP law, but it doesn't let its ignorance stop it from trotting out nearly every term (plagiarism, theft) imaginable in hopes of quick compliance.
The first false claim it makes is that Twitter will shut down an account for a single infringement violation. Not true. Twitter may shut down an account for multiple cases of infringement, but a single report won't result in the removal of an account, as is clearly stated in the Twitter terms of service. (On Press has also made claim that this process will shut down an account in 4 hours. You may laugh at this one.)
Twitter will also terminate a user's account if the user is determined to be a repeat infringer.
If the proper steps are followed (via the DMCA form), the offending Tweet will simply be "withheld," with a notice replacing the original Tweet. Finally, On Press delivers this bizarre phrase:
For an entity so concerned with copyright infringement, it certainly doesn't seem to understand the terminology it's throwing around. "Libel" and "liable" are nowhere close to each other in definition, and you'd think an entity this concerned with infringement would know the difference (or at least be able to spell the one it actually means).
Then there's On Press Inc itself, which has its own issues. As you can see from its profile photo, On Press claims to be a division of Knopf Publishing. However, we contacted Knopf Publishing for comment and they said that there is no division of Knopf called On Press Inc. On Press has apparently decided an appearance of Shane's poem in a Poem-A-Day-Celebration hosted by Tumblr and Knopf allows it to add Knopf's name to its profile... and the large publisher's weight to its fight against unattributed use, despite no official connection to the company.
On Press also utilizes multiple simultaneous Twitter accounts, in violation of the Twitter Rules.
Serial Accounts: You may not create serial accounts for disruptive or abusive purposes, or with overlapping use cases. Mass account creation may result in suspension of all related accounts. Please note that any violation of the Twitter Rules is cause for permanent suspension of all accounts.
In one night, my interactions with On Press Inc. included input from the following accounts: @copyrightdept, @vesoaonpress, @vseawonpress, @wasweonpress, @xaswonpress and @xseionpress. All accounts sported the same On Press logo and spouted the same tweets. One could try to make a claim that these accounts are not "disruptive" or "abusive" (and I'd love to watch them make that claim), but there's little doubt On Press Inc's multiple accounts are "overlapping." (@vseawonpress is the only account not suspended at the time of this writing.)
Now, although I was receiving the same stream of misspellings and misinformation from On Press as the other users posting Shaun Shane's (unattributed) poem, I wasn't seeing any signs of life. I was pretty much convinced it was a bot running multiple accounts. To test that theory, I called out On Press on the false claims directed my way, specifically the assertion that Twitter would delete my account for a single violation. To my surprise, it provoked a very human reaction.
So, there was a human behind the account, one who handily provided a link to the terms of service that directly contradicted what he had just said. (I've shifted pronouns, but an explanation is on the way.)
Once I had his/its attention, I pointed out On Press' suspicious behavior -- namely, the multiple suspended accounts linked to its name.
On Press responded with this blast of angry tweets, stating that Twitter itself generated these accounts for it.
It shouldn't need to be said, but this claim is completely false. Mike contacted Twitter to ask about whether or not, as On Press claims, it creates thousands of automatically generated accounts for companies with which to harass infringers, and (no surprise) Twitter said there is no truth to this claim.
I attempted to gather more information, but my overtures were rejected. At one point, an On Press account mentioned it performed this "service" for "other authors" but refused to name any. It also failed to cough up a usable URL that might indicate On Press Inc exists outside of multiple Twitter accounts.
Shortly thereafter, the accounts went ballistic, showering me with a long list of legal threats.
This was prompted by its discovery of a tongue-in-cheek review of the only book On Press has for sale, one I had posted earlier that night. (You may notice a second review has suddenly appeared -- from the same person who showed up to criticize my review.)
Again, On Press made several dubious claims, including the ridiculous suggestion that Twitter would surrender my IP address to the police on the strength of a fake review posted on an entirely different site. It also seemed to feel that the Feds would be interested simply because I was using a computer.
However, he/it wasn't kidding about one thing: "legal prosecution." The morning following this bizarre conversation with On Press (Feb. 8th), Techdirt received a phone call seeking to confirm that I "worked for Techdirt," with the "lawyer" on the phone saying that he wished to serve me with a lawsuit (at Techdirt's headquarters) for "copyright infringement, defamation of character and making false claims."
To date, nothing has been filed, despite the voicemail implying the lawsuit was already filed. But here's the great thing about legal threats: nothing being served to this point doesn't mean nothing ever will. The possibility still exists and the potential plaintiff is free to file anytime before the statute of limitations expires. This is likely a bluff, but it carries enough weight to make any future direct interaction with On Press ill advised, to say the least. This leaves him/it free to aggressively pursue those posting the poem without attribution, without worrying that I might ruin the fun by pointing out its false claims.
With the threat of a lawsuit still hanging overhead, I'm simply going to present my findings, all backed up with screenshots and/or links, with a minimum of speculative commentary.
The On Press Inc. "Network"
First off, let's address the "him/it" issue. On Press Inc. seems to exist solely as multiple accounts spanning several social media platforms. Running a search will serve up a few hits on existing businesses with the same name, but I have confirmed that these are unrelated to this bizarre attribution trolling.
A Poem Is Nothing
Shane's book is print-on-demand. Amazon doesn't list it this way, but other booksellers do. So, there's no pile of unsold paperbacks sitting in an On Press warehouse. This may explain why there's so little effort made to provide infringers with a "buy" link during the barrage of tweets and comments.
The On Press Twitter horde usually presents two links. One of them leads to this video displaying "proof" that someone (d/b/a On Press, Inc., with no address displayed) holds the copyright to "Tongues Made of Glass." (The other links to the Invisible Children photo.)
Now, a video like this could be made by literally anyone (with hands) and hardly presents a solid case for On Press' claim to Shaun Shane's poem. None of his work has been registered at the US Copyright office, either by himself or by On Press (or by anyone, actually). This limits any legal liability for infringement to actual proven damages, making the threat of a lawsuit slightly more tolerable. Also, the claims made at the end of the video, which appear to be a bastardization of the typical "copyright policies" found on sporting events, saying no copies can be made "without written consent of the publisher," overstates the powers given under copyright law in ignoring the possibility of fair use or other exceptions to copyright law.
Interestingly, the voice on the "copyright" video sounds nearly identical to Shaun Shane himself. Shane has a very distinctive cadence and tone to his voice, as evidenced by this live performance.
[Shane's voice also bears heavy, heavy resemblance to that of James Roth ("representing On Press Incorporated"), the caller who contacted Techdirt about serving me with the lawsuit.]
So, is On Press simply Shaun Shane, reclusive poet and attribution seeker? He'd certainly be the person most interested in enforcing this. His impossibly glowing bio at PoemHunter puts Shane in Schrodinger's Box, theorizing that he's dead ("...had become terminally ill and his re-emergence was to reinforce the ethic of Pure Poetry or Truly Modernist Poetry before his death..."), before theorizing in the opposite direction a few sentences later ("though it is believed, if he is still alive, he lives on the West Coast...") One of the On Press Twitter accounts I dealt with claimed Shane was dead and had willed that his work be used to raise money for various children's charities. (Too bad no one's trying to sell that book...) This claim is echoed at Pinterest, where the same sort of attribution-badgering occurs.
Mike Miche
Whether Mr. Miche is real or simply Shaun using another name remains to be proven. (It does share a Shaun Shane-like bit of alliteration.) Miche patrols Pinterest, sending users who re-pin this photo the same sort of messages as the Twitter accounts do, only without the character limit.
Miche also sports the same shaky legal grasp and penchant for baseless threats.
Here Miche chases down a user (who deleted her tweet) and continues harassing her at her Pinterest account, claiming that people like her using an unattributed quote can "cause untold billions of dollars of lost [sic] for companies who support and publisher [sic] Authors [sic... again] works." Miche also seems to make the claim that she's legally responsible for any retweets (a claim echoed in return by the On Press Twitter accounts).
Also of note: the single DMCA notice attributed to On Press was issued by Mike Miche. The notice has the sender's name redacted, but a duckduckgo search reveals Miche's name in the search results. If this is really Shaun Shane, he's either using false information to file DMCA notices, or Mike Miche is his real name (Shaun Shane is a pseudonym, according to his bio).
Alexandria Hopewell
Hopewell has sent out similar messages to Facebook users, again seeking attribution and using identical wording.
There are a few differences that might indicate she was just "pitching in" with the attribution push ("This Poem is our copyrighted property your use of it uncredited to him constitutes thief."), but by and large, it resembles missives issued at other platforms.
We send and deal with 1000's of take down notices every day. Hardly do we need your amateurish insight into what constitutes legal and effective enforcement of our Copyright .
Hopewell is a real human being, however, and is very definitely not Shaun Shane. She has an account at Google+, and her writing there doesn't bear much resemblance to what's posted on Facebook. There is a very interesting interaction on her timeline that indicates "Shaun Shane" is probably alive.
A user named "Sean Seans" refers to himself as "Shaun" and tells her he loves and misses her. And that Sean Seans/Shaun is also busy chasing down wrongdoers posting unattributed poems.
Anne Murphy
Anne Murphy has also made posts on Facebook concerning Shane's poem and seems to be located in Texas (at least judging from the locations of most of her Friends). The wording is almost identical to the Facebook posts by Alexandria Hopewell, suggesting the same author wrote them. She has also uploaded a few videos of Shaun Shane performances to YouTube. (Interestingly, the phone number on the caller ID from the call by "James Roth" to contact Techdirt is registered to Anne Murphy and also to a vegetable farm, the O.P. Murphy Produce Company -- both in Texas. Also worth noting: there does not appear to be a "James Roth" listed on the Texas state bar. If whoever called is not, in fact, a lawyer, they might want to familiarize themselves with Texas law 38.122 which makes it a felony to impersonate a lawyer.)
But that's not all. Shane/On Press also stalks Tumblr with multiple accounts (some of which are filled with work-from-home scam posts), issuing the now-familiar statements demanding attribution. A search for the terms "Shaun Shane" and "On Press" also brings up hits on several other platforms. On Press/Shane is very busy, though (as far as I can see) never seems to direct anyone towards buying the actual book.
He has also ramped up the aggression, perhaps as a result of his "successful" legal threat. The On Press Twitter interactions were never pleasant, but the latest ones have a decidedly malevolent tone that's undercut slightly by the sheer number of false claims they contain. It doesn't help that the poem is most frequently tweeted by teens -- a demographic On Press/Shane seems to enjoy hurling threats towards.
"know that you can be track by your ip address and that your parents will be the one's who are sued since you are a minor..."
"know that the average cost is $4000.00 per instance but that is times the number of follwers you have, or the number people who are exposed to your illegal post..."
"...but if you were bright you wouldn't have been stupid enought to tweet the poem in the first place..."
"WE don't care if you care. Your account will be terminated that is all that matters to us. We are indifferent to your feelings about it. your just some dumb kid."
There are some interesting legal theories mixed up in there that we have not seen before. I particularly like the idea that infringement is multiplied by the number of followers you have. This would appear to be an entirely novel interpretation (by which I mean "wrong") of 17 USC 504, which has always been clear that the amount of statutory damages paid is per work infringed, not by the number of people who saw the work.
So, what's the point? Why should we care? On Press/Shane is just seeking attribution. It's not like he's sending out settlement letters. Well, for starters, this is not how the system is supposed to work. Those concerned about infringement are directed to Twitter's DMCA form, which to date, On Press has used only once. Apparently, this method is much less satisfying than the instant feedback one gets while hounding Twitter users (even going so far as to follow them to other platforms, as Mike Miche [above] did).
I'm not pissed off that On Press circumvents a system many rights holders find inefficient. I'm pissed off that On Press deceives people about its relationship with a major publisher, using that as leverage to harass users with a variety of baseless threats. It doesn't help that the users receiving the most abuse are teenagers who did nothing more than post a quote they liked, who are then threatened with arrest and lawsuits against their parents in return.
I'm pissed off that On Press is fighting a battle it can't win utilizing bullying tactics. It seems to want respect, but keeps forgetting respect is something you earn -- not something you beat into people. People may start to respect the stick, but they'll never respect the entity wielding it.
Furthermore, if I was a rights holder hoping to protect my creations, I'd be pissed off that someone out there is doing serious damage to copyright itself with a scorched earth policy of baseless threats and vindictive bullying. It makes it that much harder to fight infringement when any existing level of respect has been torn down by another's overly aggressive tactics.
Finally, if I'm Shaun Shane, and I'm not behind this? I'm fucking furious. Any potential legacy or possibility of expanding my audience has been absolutely destroyed by someone who has used my name to harangue internet users across multiple platforms, utilizing angry missives filled with misspellings, deception, baseless legal threats and a very dangerous misunderstanding of IP law in general.
And Shaun, if this is actually you? You're only hurting yourself and your reputation by hammering unwitting Twitter users (among others) for this act of omission. There's nothing wrong with seeking proper attribution. But there are so many methods that work better than this. You can't stop unattributed quotes from flying around the internet. You can't even slow it down.
Do you seriously think anyone's going to Google a tweet to make sure it doesn't belong to someone else before retweeting it? Do you really think people are going to Google "Shaun Shane" unless you bring it up first? Pinterest users, right or wrong, aren't going to do a reverse image search before repinning. Sure, it sucks that stuff strays so far from the original creators, but that's the price you pay for unprecedented access to millions of creative works.
But the benefits outweigh the negatives. Unprecedented access works both ways. You can connect with potential fans and customers in ways that simply weren't possible 10 years ago. If you're only going to see the worst aspects, you'll never be anything more than a set of empty words and threats, spat endlessly into a void, covered in vitriol and self-righteousness. You've crafted a poem with viral possibilities but you're only interested in slamming every door shut as soon as it opens. This final perspective doesn't make me angry. It just makes me sad. There's so much potential but you're too angry to see it. You, and only you, can turn this around.
Additional/supportive links and info.
My Storify account, where I will continue to collect interactions between On Press Inc. and Twitter users.
The Evansville Courier & Press recently wrote a lengthy piece about HOAs and how they can range wildly in quality, from being so laissez-faire that you wonder where your money is going to providing the services your area needs to micro-dictatorships that leave residents unhappy.
The HOA at the center of this story is called Stonecreek Arbors, in Indiana’s Vandenburgh County. According to the paper, the Stonecreek HOA was responsible for more than half of all the liens filed in the county last year. Many of these liens were for unpaid HOA dues worth a little more than $200.
The 49 liens filed by the HOA translates to slightly less than 1/6 of all the homes in the subdivision.
Anyone who's even slightly familiar with HOAs knows it's going to be nearly impossible to find a flattering article written about these overweening middlemen/micromanagers who have inserted themselves between homeowners and their own property. (At least one that's not written by association board members...) Why so many of these associations exist is a mystery, given that most people resent having arbitrary rules and limitations placed on something they purchased. It's like DRM for houses.
That being said, Stonecreek Arbor was like any other homeowners association that makes the news. Excessive fees. Sudden bans on a previously parkable driveway, which instead became a HOA board member's private road to and from the lake. Demanding pets be microchipped, even when the existing "rules" carried no language to that effect. And so on.
The Evansville Courier article detailed these offenses, leading off with a photo of the subdivision's entrance which handily sported the Stonecreek name, lest anyone be confused about which HOA was currently abusing its members. Shortly after publication (and following a brief interview with the HOA president Stephen Hess -- captured "on tape" over at the Consumerist), the Evansville Courier & Press received this email from Hess.
“[T]his notice also requires you not to at any measure mention anything regarding my name, any resident of Stonecreek, NOR will we ALLOW any of your printing in any article regarding Stonecreek at any time in any publication… You will be held liable for any violations of this letter and notice/request in this email. If we find/discover you have mentioned Stonecreek in any legal matter their (sic) will be action toward yourself as well as any print paper you represent in the media article.
“You may contact any HOA in the County of Vanderburgh, the State of Indiana, but Stonecreek will not PERMIT OR ALLOW YOU our legal name in any future article.”
There are a lot of claims being made here that the HOA president can't hope to back up. Exactly how he was hoping to prevent mention "in any publication," much less the one with which he's currently tangling, is unclear. Maybe he was hoping a few CAPITALIZED WORDS would strike fear in their tiny journalistic souls. The double threat of "being held liable" and having "action toward" the paper doesn't seem to have prevented publication of this article on the internet, or in "any print paper."
The HOA president didn't even throw out handy, but un-actionable, terms like "libel" or "defamation," but he did follow up with one more vocal threat:
That obviously didn’t work, nor did the phone call to the Courier & Press, which demanded the paper “stop this article immediately, because I will sue you just like I sue the people who don’t pay their dues.” he said.
While Hess certainly seems to know his way around legal matters like lien filing (he filed more than 47 liens against his neighbors in one day), he seems to have a little trouble parsing the grayer area of public criticism. His response has just dropped Stonecreek's reputation from "bad" to "worse," and he will probably find himself on the outside staring in come the next board election. Now, he's also "internet (in)famous" as well, having successfully portrayed himself as the sort of person who comes out suing at the drop of a hat. Not much fun to deal with at a phone line's length, much less as a neighbor.
Recently, we highlighted the tremendous difficulty that visually impaired people have encountered when it comes to intellectual property. The White House had initially endorsed, then stalled, an international effort to expand fair use rights to help visually impaired individuals get greater access to written works. We also highlighted how DRM was a threat to the visually impaired. However, it is not just large interests making life difficult for this class of readers.
Thanks to TechnoMage, we learn that New Hampshire-based mobile app designer Abelardo Gonzalez had created a font that is easier for those with dyslexia to read books and websites, but it ended up facing some legal threats from a competing font designer. First off, we have a little background on the font.
The plight of dyslexic individuals served as inspiration to Abelardo Gonzalez, a New Hampshire-based mobile app designer, who devised a clever font to help dyslexics read digital text easier.
The font, dubbed "OpenDyslexic", employs a trick in which the bottoms of characters are weighted. Curiously some dyslexic individuals visual processing cortexes rotate images that look slender, making characters appear backwards or upside down. By making the bottom look "heavier" the font reportedly reduces this kind of visual "bug" in the brains of people with this disability.
Along with creating this font, Abelardo had released an app for iPhone and Android devices that allows those device owners to override the default font wherever it is used and replace it with this font. Other app developers had also started using it as an alternative font. Even e-reader makers Sony and Amazon have taken interest. Unfortunately, this kind of greater access is not something to celebrate if you are trying to market a more expensive font to the same demographic.
He relates that he was contacted by font designer Christian Boer (who sells an alternative font called dyslexie for $69 USD per "single-use" license) to "cease and desist" early during his process.
At the time he was charging a nominal fee and did reuse some bitstream-vera-sans characters as the basis for his font. Bitstream-vera-sans' license explicitly allows derivative fonts to be sold (free of fee to the bitstream font creators), however, Mr. Boer was claiming that the offense occurred due to the fact that Mr. Gonzalez had changed the (free) font in a similar way as he had. By all appearances the real issue was that Mr. Gonzalez was offering it for far cheaper than Mr. Boer.
In response to this threat, Abelardo released the font for free made some modifications to the font, thus allowing greater access to the public, Abelardo had already released the font for free and was not planning on backing down, which was probably the exact opposite of the reaction Boer wanted. The fact that Boer felt threatened enough by a cheaper free font shows just how weak his position is. Abelardo even admits that Boer's font is better and has become even better as a result of having more competition in the market. So why does Boer feel the need to threaten the competition? Shouldn't the fact that he can provide a better alternative be enough incentive for people to seek him out? Or perhaps, if people and companies are turning to cheaper or free alternatives, maybe it's a sign that he might be charging too much?
As someone with two dyslexic brothers, I am glad that there are people out there trying to make the world of text easier on them. Had my mother had access to a font like Abelardo's or Boer's, she probably would have had an easier time teaching them throughout school. Perhaps if the school systems that had abandoned my brothers had access to one of these fonts, they probably would have had an easier time teaching them and many others.
As we move into a more electronic world in which the ability to switch out fonts and make other changes to support the visually impaired becomes more accessible, we can provide a better solution to those who need the additional help. Unfortunately, if more people like Boer and legacy publishers get their way, such tools will be locked away behind expensive paywalls, decreasing the value and accessibility to those who truly need them.
